


Home Is Where the Heart Lives

by ScienceofObsession



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Gen, Post Reichenbach, Reichenbach Feels, warnings for weak mopey John
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-04-29
Updated: 2012-04-29
Packaged: 2017-11-04 13:12:38
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 463
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/394252
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ScienceofObsession/pseuds/ScienceofObsession
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Baker Street IS Sherlock, so John walks.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Home Is Where the Heart Lives

It’s pouring out, and John walks. Dreadful weather, wind swirling, clawing at his coat and driving droplets into his face in stinging swarms. They mingle with his tears, warm with chilled, pure with salt. He thanks the rain for hiding them, so intertwined that maybe, just maybe, he can pretend they aren’t there. The wetness creeps under his collar, in his cuffs, his socks, and still he walks. Head down, hands deep in pockets, he walks with a purpose he doesn’t even try to discern. Perhaps it’s just to get out of the flat, perhaps he’s looking for something. Perhaps he’s looking to escape something.

But escape doesn’t come with a little rain, or a grim midnight walk. It doesn’t come with tears or anger or wishes. It doesn’t come with smashed teacups or sleepless nights. It doesn’t come with denial or hope, with curiosity or listlessness, frustration or determination. For John, escape doesn’t come at all.

Because every day he returns to Baker Street, where he keeps Sherlock tucked away, and he remembers. He dwells. He mourns. Hell, sometimes, when the darkness makes him honest, he even _regrets_.

They’ve all told him he should leave. Even Mrs. Hudson suggests it, though he at least has the small comfort that the advice comes at a personal cost to her. But unerringly loyal John has never even considered it, not for a second. He could no sooner leave than forget the hurricane his life became when he first set foot in that lab at Barts and loaned his mobile to a pale-skinned stranger.

Baker Street _is_ Sherlock. And for that, John will always stay. He sees him everywhere: leaning up against the wall in the entry hall, huffing a breathy laugh that first night they met. On the 7 th stair, where John had once collapsed and had first known the tenderness in those slim fingers as they hoisted him up. In front of the window, a hawkish shadow, composing at 3am. His name written in the Rorschach of stains on the kitchen ceiling. John hears him pacing, smells him in the couch cushions, tastes him on the lip of his mug. When he’s at Baker Street, John can still feel Sherlock with him, and though the pain of that presence drives John in directions he’s not sure he wants to really think about, it’s what he craves, and he gives in shamefully.

So John continues to walk, continues to be wet and morose and purposeful. Because Sherlock is home, waiting for him in the walls and the pillows and the scrawled list left tacked on the empty refrigerator. And though, for now, John can’t stand one more moment of that dusty memory, he walks with the knowledge that home is waiting for him.

 

**Author's Note:**

> Remember that time I was awful at titling my fics? 
> 
> As always, nobody has beta'd or anything else, so if you spot fixables, please do let me know.
> 
> Thanks for reading!


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